A logo very similar to the golden McDonald's M, the Golden Arch, that was attributed to the alleged new Russian fast food brand "Uncle Vanya" has turned out to be fake.
Russia reacts to sanctions by lifting protection rights
withdrew from the country in the wake of the war in Ukraine and the comprehensive sanctions against Russia , the situation is becoming wild. In response to the sanctions, the Kremlin published a list of “unfriendly” states. This includes all EU states, but also the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Australia and Japan. Patent rights and other corporate protection rights have been repealed for these states, so that Russian entrepreneurs can access foreign intellectual property, such as technical knowledge, at will, at least in Russia, with impunity ( HERE ). On the one hand, the actual rights holder is no longer protected, and on the other hand, he does not receive any claim for damages ( HERE in Russian).
Due to the repealed trademark rights, brands and logos can now be freely copied or adapted for your own purposes. This is what supposedly happened at McDonalds. Western rights holders have no way of enforcing these rights against Russian companies.
Brilliant new Golden M?
A few days ago, a logo appeared online that was extremely similar to the well-known Golden M from McDonald's, only rotated by 90 degrees. Many reputable media outlets have picked up on this narrative ( HERE )

McDonalds had already completely withdrawn from Russia at the beginning of March. 850 restaurants were closed. This led to long queues in front of the restaurants and bizarre actions by severely obese guests who chained themselves in front of the restaurants to demonstrate for their right to fast food ( HERE ).
Media outlets worldwide reported that the American fast food gap would now be filled by homegrown brand Uncle Vanya, which would take over the nearly 850 McDonald's restaurants.
The highlight, the letter W like Wanja corresponds roughly to the Latin B in the Cyrillic alphabet, i.e. two curved arcs like the McDonald's M. Small differences are skilfully covered up by the design and choice of color, the typical yellow on a red background, so that the first impression inevitably goes towards the American fast food giant.
Is Duma planning a new fast food chain?
All of this took on highly official characteristics when the corresponding logo was registered with the Russian Federal Office of Industrial Property just a few days after McDonald's withdrawal! Just to follow up: A logo that is known worldwide and also in Russia was massively imitated. And the rights to the imitation are officially protected in Russia. The fact that the Federal Office's abbreviation is FIPS, which sounds cute to us, is probably pure coincidence.
According to Forbes Russia, the trademark entry was not made by the “Uncle Vanya” parent company Ruspolebrands-Holding, but by a company called Russkoe Pole-Logistik LLC, a company with six employees in the city of Lyubertsy. The blog Designtagebuch, which was one of the first to research the topic very intensively and well, reports that the registration was deleted two days later, on March 12th ( HERE ).
What's going on there?
The withdrawal of Western companies has sparked some debate in Russia. After all, in addition to the Russian population's access to services and products, jobs and customers for Russian raw materials and intermediate products are also being lost. The pressure this creates on the government, business and citizens is precisely the aim of the sanctions. This also became an issue with McDonald, all the way up to the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament. The following statement is attributed to Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin in the Russian media.
“We have to protect people because the companies that are leaving now want to make money from our Russian raw materials. Here McDonald's, 100 percent Russian raw materials, announced its closure. Well, close, but tomorrow there shouldn't be McDonald's, but Uncle Vanya's. Jobs must be saved and prices reduced. That’s the approach.”
( HERE and HERE using the Firefox plugin ImTranslator)
Specifically, but probably only as an example, he brings up the name Uncle Wanja in order to run a similar fast food chain. Possibly this was exactly the initial spark for the fake by the small company that otherwise has nothing to do with Uncle Wanja.
Will Uncle Vanya become the Russian McDonalds?
There is one problem, however. Uncle Vanya apparently has no such ambitions. The company belongs to the Ruspolebrands holding and is a Russian food producer. The company also sells canned vegetables, such as cucumbers in jars. However, that would be a real relationship to McDonald's core product, the hamburger. Every good hamburger needs a slice of pickled cucumber. The company also has tomatoes in jars in its range. (Incidentally, alleged pickle jars have already played a prominent role in defense against drones elsewhere in the Ukraine conflict.) But the Uncle Vanja company, which has no special expertise in system catering, has no plans at all to close the McDonald's branches take over. At least that's what the company says itself.

Even though Uncle Vanya's creative succession solution for the Russian McDonald's branches has found its way through the entire world press, the news is wrong. Here is the translation of the company's press release from March 17th:
“Uncle Vanya does not plan to open a chain of fast food restaurants for the place “McDonalds”.
We hereby inform you that the legal entities of Ruspole HoldingTrademarks and the brand “Uncle Vanya” have no connection with the logo created as a meme using the inverted letter “M” of the catering chain “McDonalds”, which has the outline of the letter “V” in Cyrillic. The information circulating on the Internet about alleged plans to replace the McDonalds brand with our Uncle Vanya brand is fake.
We also confirm that Ruspole Holdingbrands actually owns the “Uncle Vanya” trademark, registered for services in class 43 of the Nice Classification, which includes catering establishments. Therefore, individuals who use the “Uncle Vanya” trademark in their catering images may be subject to claims for damages.
( HERE and translated via Firefox plugin ImTranslator HERE ).

The company is currently not considering setting up a network of catering establishments, but is not categorically rejecting such an idea in the future.
The Nice Classification allows several possible sectors for which a trademark should be protected to be specified when registering trademarks. Note: In his denial, Uncle Vanja argues precisely with the protective rights that the Kremlin has just revoked for “unfriendly” states and threatens to claim damages if his own protective rights are ignored….
By the way, the logo of the Uncle Vanya company looks completely different. Of course, this would not rule out the possibility that a new logo could be used for certain projects or company activities.

Conclusion
In response to the Western sanctions, companies from countries classified as “unfriendly” were deprived of their economic protection rights for intellectual property, patents, trademarks, etc. This means that, in theory, any Russian can plagiarize as he pleases. Possibly in response to a comment by the chairman of the Russian lower house of parliament, the Duma, a Russian company that has nothing to do with Uncle Vanya has trademarked a logo that plays on the letters of the Uncle Vanya brand, making the McDonalds logo very strong imitated. The trademark registration has now been deleted. The Uncle Vanya company has denied any current intention to take over Russian McDonald's restaurants in a press release.
The motivation for this action is unknown. Perhaps this was intended to increase pressure on the West by documenting the seriousness of Russia's countermeasures against Western economic sanctions through the officially permitted plagiarization of one of the Western world's best-known logos.
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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

